Military History

Group 34. Leader- Nigel Hoad

Over one hundred members are registered – and it is not only the men who are interested in military history. There are a good number of women who never miss a talk.

We have eight lectures in the academic year from September to May. Speakers are invited from the military world, the universities, RMA Sandhurst, and from our own U3A members. Topics are wide ranging – from the Greek wars to Iraq, Hastings to Gettysburg and the Imjin to the Euphrates.

Each lecture is 1½ hours with ½ an hour for lively questioning of the speakers. The lectures are held at Farnham Maltings.

20th Oct: ‘Les Tommettes’, the story of the Womens’ Army Auxiliary Corps (1917-21), our first official female soldiers, by Bianca Taubert, assistant curator AGC Mueum, Winchester

24th Nov: From a harem in Algiers in 1943 to a shipping container in Helmand in 2016, the history of the Forces Broadcasting Service, by Alan Grace, a long-serving veteran of that organisation

2018

19th Jan: Hampshire’s Band of Brothers; 7th Battalion Hampshire Regiment, from training to the Normandy landings and the long slog to Germany, by Ian Taylor from their Regimental Museum

23rd Feb: Bats and Hedgehogs; Britain’s secret war in Oman in the 1970s, by Capt (retd) Pete Starling RAMC, our Corps Historian and Curator of the Army Medical Services Museum

23rd Mar: The seven ages of Aldershot Camp, by Paul Vickers from the Friends of Aldershot Military Museum (previously spoke on Wellington)

20th Apr: Prof Sir Simon Wessely, President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and a world expert in Gulf War syndrome and PTSD in servicemen/women

18th May: Brigadier (retd) Nigel Gilbert L/RLC who after a successful Army career went on to spend 10 years at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, with the rather splendid job title of ‘Captain of the Invalids’ which he describes as something like being a Housemaster at a boarding school. He will talk about the life and times of the Royal Hospital from it’s foundation in 1692 until the present day.

15th June: A return by Alan Grace whose title this time will be: Berlin, the military history of a city from the rise of Hitler to the fall of the Wall.